Wednesday, January 04, 2017

President Trump rescued House Republicans on Tuesday

President Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning and saved House Republicans from themselves.

We know that because the Never Trump Wall Street Journal denounced the move.
In an editorial today, the Wall Street Journal got the facts but the conclusion wrong. That's because the Sir Rupert Murdoch newspaper still looks down its nose at a man from Queens. He is tabloid trash, right?

Never mind that he defeated both political parties and two families that between them controlled the presidency for 20 years.From the editorial:

Fake Ethics Reform Fiasco

The House GOP shows it will too easily bend to liberals—and Trump.

The 115th Congress flopped into Washington on Tuesday with House Republicans proposing and then dropping marginal changes to an internal ethics office. The reversal is an unforced political error, but the GOP is right that the investigative body has the power to destroy reputations without due process.

By the way, Paul Ryan was re-elected Speaker Tuesday with one GOP defection, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi lost four Democrats. But that news was dwarfed as the House considered rules for the new Congress, and Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte offered an amendment to restructure the Office of Congressional Ethics.

The office is composed of political grandees, often former Members, and it has no prosecutorial power. But it conducts investigations into Members or staffers and makes recommendations to the House Ethics Committee. The proposal limited what information can be released to the public and barred the committee from having a press secretary. Also banned: anonymous tips.

Mr. Ryan and other House leaders opposed the rule as badly timed. But the rank and file adopted the idea Monday night anyway, only to dump it on Tuesday after denunciations from the Democratic-media complex. The left rounded up callers to deluge Republican switchboards for “gutting” the outfit. Donald Trump couldn’t resist piling on with a pair of tweets: “With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it may be, their number one act and priority.”

That was sound political advice from a man who won despite:

Being outspent 2-1

Getting 90% negative "news" coverage

Losing every debate

Two divorces

Four trips to bankruptcy court

And a few uncouth quotes

Oh and he was a rookie candidate for any office.

If two months after that magnificent presidential victory one still does not get it, one is just being obstinate.

President Trump was not caving to the PC press.

That will never happen, much to the consternation of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

After telling the PC press to kiss his posterior for nearly two years, President Trump was merely advising House Republicans to pick their battles.

The party has only so much political capital.

Likewise, this is my advice to a once great newspaper which depleted its credibility for open borders and cheap labor in Communist China

Pick your battles.

Pick your battles.

Pick your battles.

Because many readers now are left wondering why the Wall Street Journal is so gung-ho about making Democrats look like ethics reformers by pushing such an unnecessary confrontation.

Others wonder why tax reform and reining in regulators are not more important than making minor changes to an obscure agency with no prosecutorial power.

And after the big blaring anti-Trump headline, the editorial concluded that this reform can wait.

The editorial ended: "The shame is that a review of the ethics office is overdue, much as due-process rights have suffered under the Obama Administration—from college campus show trials to bankrupting legal companies. Maybe Congress can restore its own due-process guarantees after it does something for everyone else’s."

So, there really was no reason to hurry this reform, as the Wall Street Journal says it should come after we restore for everyone else the protections of due process.

Basically this editorial said was not about any principle but rather a protest against President Trump leading the Republican Party through the shoals of a hostile press.

Trumptastic! After all the years of the GOP Establishment working on their own pet projects and ignoring the issues that voters elected them to tackle they finally have someone to put them in their place. I reckon they just needed someone who can smack them upside the head on occasion and point out their foibles when they lose focus or intentionally diverge from the task at hand. Now, let's get 'er done! - Elric

I've been reading a history of Athenian democracy by Thomas Mitchell and something struck me yesterday. We've bee through a bunch of speech wars of late with the left and the universities acting to control speech for the past few decades, and seeing it reach a crescendo level after the broadened freedom of the internet, and now literal screech level with the populist Trump. In Athens it was the oligarchs were the ones who tried to regulate speech. Even when the democratic side had complete hegemony they did not try to regulate speech and any attempts to do so were put down. Just a thought.

I had reached the same conclusion. Republicans would do well to keep in mind that the MSM will always write the headline to make them look bad. This one would have been, "GOP Congress First Act Guts Ethics Review Panel."

FAKE NEWS FOLLIES OF 2017

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I live in Poca, West Virginia, with my lovely wife of 40 years, Lou Ann. I am an Army veteran and Cleveland State graduate. I retired after 40 years as a newspaperman. In 2016, I published "Trump the Press," which drew rave reviews at Power Line and Instapundit.